099

Adam asked a few more details and got ready to head through the corridors, telling the children how to proceed in case they meet one of the two creatures that inhabited this area, supposedly it should be easy thanks to the advice of his godfather. They were on the stairs in hex 3 and Adam planned to go to the mirror in hex 2 through the main hallways lined with bookshelves that he could hold on to if he heard anything weird.

Carefully, Adam proceeded to leave the stairs to find himself again through the corridors of dirt and puddles, he saw that there was no one there and decided to leave towards hexagon 2 with the boys holding hands.

They were walking very slowly, and Adam was concentrating on finding footsteps on the ground and listening for strange sounds. The two boys were trying to listen too, but his ears were hurting enough to hear anything other than the strange voices.

Adam arrived at the entrance of hexagon 2 without finding anything strange, but on the way he began to notice some strange tracks: they looked like very small green claws, and there were many on the ground in this area. The three boys wanted to avoid them, but they realized that all the paths to the mirror were full of these footprints. They walked through the corridors towards the mirror, but on the way Hermes heard something strange and told Adam:

I'm hearing someone asking for help. What do we do, big man?

—We just have to…—Adam wanted to say that they don't care about helping others, but he remembered how Franco and Bianca tried to help him while he had decided to abandon them. He had promised to try to help others ever since that day, so Adam ended by saying:

—Do you also hear someone asking for help, Apolo? I don't hear anything.

—Yes, the noises are a little further on, that's where we're going, I think...—Apolo answered with some fear, taking Adam's hand even tighter.

—Well, if that's the case, let's just keep going forward—Adam said with a little more confidence, anyway that was the direction of the mirror, if it was something very bad because of the distances he could run towards the mirror, they weren't that far anymore.

The three of them walked carefully and around corners, finally Adam could begin to hear where the pleas were coming from and noticed the footprints of librarians in that direction. He sounded like a very old man calling for help, and his voice carried with the murmurs of the halls in some way that Adam didn't understand. Very carefully, the young man walked towards the corner of the corridor where the sound came from.

Before crossing the corner, he stopped a few minutes to listen, he wanted to be sure that nothing bad happened.

—Help...Help...Help...—Someone was repeating the same message over and over again, it seemed like a recording and the intonation was very tired, to the point that it seemed that the person was suffering.

Adam took hold of one of the empty wooden boards on one of the shelves and stuck his head out to see what was there, even if it was the 'inkwell' nothing bad would happen to him according to his godfather if he did this and the inkwell I noticed it.

At a glance, Adam could see that there was an old man in tattered black robes lying on the ground, the old man was missing both legs and there seemed to be a trail of blood on the ground.

Adam noted that the old man must have been crawling on the floor with bleeding legs to try to get to the mirror and be healed. Following the idea, they should have attacked him in the corridor opposite because he didn't see blood in the corridor from him.

There were also several small green claw tracks heading forward, it seemed that they attacked the old man and then ignored him.

But looking more closely at the floor of the corridor where the old man was pleading, Adam noticed that there were countless pieces of black robes lying in the corridor opposite and a few books. It would seem that they attacked a group of people traveling together and the old man somehow survived.

The old man seemed not to have seen him, he only begged for help and very slowly crawled on the ground trying to reach the mirror, Adam knew that the old man would never make it if he moved at this rate.

Carefully, Adam decided to keep moving forward and help the old man. Oddly enough, the old man couldn't hear the three youngsters even when they were within arm's reach of him. Adam reached out and grabbed the old man's shoulder on the ground as he told the children to take the planks of wood.

The old man felt Adam touching him, and he cried out loudly when he saw his face:

—I beg you! Help, it's only a few more corridors, and we reach the mirror! Can you carry me, young man?

—Don't scream, damn it!—Adam muttered angrily, almost closing his mouth with his hand, but the old man couldn't hear him and seemed to want to keep screaming for help. So Adam changed the method, he took off his glasses and looked at the old man's eyes.